Ladd-Franklin and a holiday cookie

When I was a student the end of final’s week often meant a deep dive into some nineteenth-century novel, probably something I had read before and would devour quickly with occasional pauses to soak in the language staying up late without fear of a test the following morning.

The post-final feeling persists, though now the end is when grades are due.

I always enjoyed that Henry David Thoreau said, “I have traveled extensively in Concord.” In the past nine months I have traveled extensively around the block. Most recently while listening to North and South and then Treasure Island on the podcast Craftlit. If this blog reboots in a semi-consistent fashion, then Robert Louis Stevenson deserves something that includes cheese. The point of this digression is that I had already been “reading” before final’s week ended, so last last Friday I unwound by making mallomars.

I did not grow up with mallomars, and in case you didn’t either they are very easy to explain. Graham cracker bottom, marshmallow filling, chocolate coating. Nothing to do with Mars as far as I am aware.

Kepler helped in the graham cracker stage, but I saved the latter messy steps for his nap time. There is something ridiculously relaxing about enrobing things in chocolate. It feels like you are the waterfall in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Meanwhile, let me introduce you to my cookie guest.

Christine Ladd-Franklin began her professional life as a mathematical logician and ended as an experimental psychologist. Along the way she fought mightily for women’s full inclusion in science, from opening graduate programs in the United States and Germany to creating fellowships and post-doctoral opportunities.

She completed a dissertation “On the Algebra of Logic” under Charles Sanders Peirce at Johns Hopkins University in 1882 and only received her doctorate in 1927 when the university finally began granting degrees to women.

To know her life story is to wish that Netflix would make a four-part biopic.

Consider the anecdote relayed in Margaret Rossiter’s Women Scientists in America in which Ladd-Franklin (born Christine Ladd and became Ladd-Franklin when she married Fabian Franklin, a Hungarian-American mathematics professor several years younger than her in 1882. The fact alone that she hyphenated her name at this time is remarkable. Her daughter (and only child who lived past infancy) kept the hyphenation and continued the struggle) argued for her attendance at the Society of Experimental Psychologists in 1914 when they met in New York City.

One technique of all-male scientific clubs was to argue that women should be excluded on the grounds that men would be smoking. Ladd-Franklin countered in her first letter to the Society.

Have your smokers separate if you like (tho I for one always smoke when I am in fashionable society) but a scientific meeting (however personal) is a necessarily public affair and… it is not open to you to leave out a class of fellow-workers without extra discourtesy.

She continued by pointing out how petty the discrimination would appear if enacted along racial lines by excluding “Jews or Japanese,” but the first letter received no response. She wrote again, with a bit more force.

Is this then a good time, my dear Professor Titchener, for you to hold to the mediaeval attitude of not admitting me to your coming psychological conference in New York — at my very door? So unconscientious, so immoral — worse than that — so unscientific! … Both the Psychological and the Philosophical Associations have long since admitted women to their smokers and everything (I smoke — I should be very unfashionable if I didn’t. No separation of the sexes is necessary any more on this ground.) It is only this acute-thinking and discussing little organization of yours (which seems to be so sadly dominated by you!) which still holds out. So mediaeval! — such an indignity!

I think the time is ripe for repurposing the exclamation “so mediaeval!” for many events of the past year or so. The good news is that, though Titchener did not repent, Ladd-Franklin secured an invitation through the meeting’s local New York host. These behind-the-scenes fights characterized Ladd-Franklin’s life and slowly advanced the opportunities for women in science in the United States and in Western Europe.

The fidgety-ness of working with marshmallow is well worth a visit from someone that we all wish we knew better. Happily, I am not fashionable, so there was no need for smoking. I like to believe that she enjoyed the engineering behind such a treat.

I will leave the further exploration of Ladd-Franklin’s fiery and inspiring biography to you, dear reader. Her papers, I hear, are plentiful and rather disorganized at Columbia University.